If Romney and Paul have anything in common, it’s their focus on economic matters over social issues. Notice how poorly moral crusaders Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum did in the poll. It’s also of interest that Romney did so well while Pawlenty got no traction at all.

I’d be tempted to argue that Romney’s numbers reflect a deep pragmatism on the part of the conferees, but then you have to match his numbers up against Ron Paul’s, and that argument doesn’t hold a lot of water.

Maybe it just reflects a fundamental split. A quarter just want someone who can win, a quarter want to completely overhaul the GOP in Paulist direction, and half are split up among various socially conservative long-shots. It’s hard to believe that these people have enough in common to even be able to talk to each other.

Or the Mid-West, or the Northern? Or, is it true that the Republican Party has finally accepted that it is basically a regional party, mostly Old Confederacy?

jack russell

Romney came up with a state-wide health care system for Massachusetts, which has some similarities to the one we just passed. But the Republicans hate the thing, and at least some of them are demanding futile gestures like attempting repeal.

So given this, how did Romney get this many votes? I suppose because nobody was really campaigning, so there were no negative ads to point all of this out.

jack russell

that there will be a split of some sort. The traditional country-club conservatives on one side, and the nutjobs on the other. If they stick together they can sometimes win, but the nutjobs are demanding more say-so and they want to nominate one of their own.